In this essay, author Adam Shatz raises important issues that deserve further discussion in light of the gruesome October 7, 2023, attack led by Hamas that targeted civilians in Israel, the genocidal war Israel unleashed in retaliation on the entire population of Gaza, and a new wave of violence by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) and Zionist settlers against Palestinians in the West Bank. Shatz also examines political developments in the Mideast and beyond after the recent U.S.-Israeli war on Iran. He spells out the implications of last year’s Israeli invasion of Lebanon, which decimated the Iranian-backed Hezbollah and caused a substantial death toll among the broader civilian Lebanese population, and of the overthrow of the Assad dictatorship in Syria. This is the first of two parts.

July 18, 2025

The following is an essay that first appeared in the July 24, 2025, issue of the London Review of Books (LRB), a prominent literary journal based in London, United Kingdom.

The author of the article is Adam Shatz, LRB’s U.S. editor. Shatz is also a contributor to The New York Times Magazine, The New York Review of Books, The New Yorker, and other publications. He is a visiting professor in the Human Rights Program of Bard College in New York.